Gaming

The recent GDC 2015, especially the revelation of its own VR ambitions, has thrust Valve and Steam back into the spotlight. Many gamers, especially of the PC kind, might still remember the promise of Steam Machines that have yet to materialize in retail forms. But while part of that equation lies on the hardware, especially the special Steam Controller, the other part is tied to the software. So just how well is Steam doing on Linux today? Well, apparently quite healthy, but it could do with a bit more.

The first Steam Machines are set to launch in November, and they’re basically small but reasonably powerful desktop computers design for gaming. They will ship with Steam OS which is a Linux-based operating system developed by Valve, the company behind the popular Steam game platform.

Valve had lots to talk about at this week’s GDC, including Steam VR, Steam Link, Steam Controller, and of course, Steam Machines. But as we can now see, it’s not just hardware that’s getting the love. For SteamOS and Linux fans, there are some serious(ly fun) reasons to get excited.

If anyone had any doubts about the commitment of Valve to the Linux operating systems, they should be put to rest with the latest SteamOS sale. It just shows how serious the company really is and that it will carry out its promises, of breaking the Windows monopoly on gaming.

Valve has developed its own Intel Vulkan GPU graphics driver for Linux that they intend to open-source.
The Vulkan API is still being argued about and will not be finalised until later this year, but Valve has been developing their own Intel GPU reference driver for Vulkan to help early adopters boot-strap their code.

PlayOnLinux is a software designed to installWindows applications and games on Linux. The team released PlayOnLinux 4.2.6 recently with several improvements and bug fixes that makes it more stable and useful. Let's install it on Ubuntu and other Ubuntu derivatives.

SteamOS is a Debian Linux kernel-based operating system in development by Valve Corporation designed to be the primary operating system for the Steam Machine game consoles. It was initially released on December 13, 2013, alongside the start of end-user beta testing of Steam Machines.

You are using Linux and thinking Linux does not support gaming.! If so, let me tell you that you are not aware of Steam. Steam is a gaming client that lets you play amazing games on Linux system. There are hundreds of free and paid games that you can play without searching the entire web. All at one place and easy to install! So let's get started!

For decades after Linux's early '90s debut, even the hardest of hardcore boosters for the open source operating system had to admit that it couldn't really compete in one important area of software: gaming. "Back in around 2010 you only had two choices for gaming on Linux," Che Dean, editor of Linux gaming news site Rootgamer recalls. "Play the few open source titles, Super Tux Kart and so on, or use WINE to play your Windows titles."

More in Tux Machines

Before ending out March, here's some new OpenGL Linux benchmarks comparing the closed-source Catalyst 15.3 Beta driver against the Linux 4.0 development kernel with Mesa 10.6 Git for the freshest open-source graphics driver code.

5 questions to determine if open source is a good fit for a software project

A benefit of open source in general, and commercial open source in particular, is that you have the support of others as well as the ability to do the maintenance yourself.
I hope these questions will help you determine whether open source is a good fit for your next software project. Let me know if there are other questions you would add to this list.

Clonezilla Live 2.4.0-7 Released to Fix a Btrfs Issue, Based on Debian Sid

Steven Shiau has released a new development version of his Clonezilla Live operating system aimed at system administrators who want an easy-to-use, portable, and straightforward solution for cloning disk drives.

Lumina Desktop 0.8.3 Released!

The next version of the Lumina Desktop Environment has just been released!
This is mainly a bugfix release to correct an urgent issue with the system tray on FreeBSD 11, but there are a number of other slight improvements/updates included as well. The full list of changes is included at the bottom of this announcement, but the notable changes are as follows:
New Panel Plugin: “Application Launcher“
This allows the user to pin the shortcut for an application directly to a panel.
New Utility: “lumina-xconfig“
This utility allows the user to easily enable/disable additional monitors/screens within the desktop session.
Fix the issue with transparent system tray icons on FreeBSD 11
Add support for the XDG autostart specifications.